Planetfall Victory Conditions

[Maniac]

Instead of having Transcendence happen automatically after building a huge project, have the player actually take part--In order for transcendence to work, the player must guide the fungus growth so that it can expand enormously (as it does in the end movie of Alpha Centauri), but still not destroy all human life anyway. Transcendence is terribly dangerous, and it is only through skilled guidance that Planet does not kill everyone off. "Tending" the fungus growth could range from manually planting fungus, to taking your own improvements and city buildings offline so as to lessen your impact on Planet. This would obviously make you much more vulnerable to attack, but could be balanced somewhat by the fact that Planet would be busy trying to kill everyone else. You could also "help" Planet by waging war against the terraforming states. This way Transcendence can be a bit more involved and interesting--you have to actually play your way through this ending.

That's more or less the idea with the current victory when the Flowering Counter crosses 100.

I think that there should be something more to the "white pine council member==>win" scenario. Perhaps you should have to be the "leader" of the council (assuming it is run like the UN).

Otherwise, if you are a very minor player, or are on the verge of losing, you shouldn't "win" just by choosing Hybrid Ecology at the last moment.

Regarding preventing a switch on the last moment, I was thinking once the Flowering Counter has passed a certain number, you could no longer switch to the Hybrid ecology civic, and the sides for the 'final battle' would be set.

Regarding only the leader council winning. My fear kinda is, that to become the leader, you might have to kill off or weaken your best friends. Personally I kinda like the idea of large 'alliance' victories, as long as, to spice up the endgame, there will be another alliance actively trying to prevent you from winning.

 

[The Beard]

As long as the AI are likely to cooperate well as allies (perhaps forcing permanent alliances?) in the endgame, I could see it working well. I've often had the problem both in SMAC(X) and Civ IV (well, all of the Civ's really) where people get a bit back-stabby when they are allied to someone better off than they.

 

[Jabie]

How about using the corporations feature from BtS? Mega-corporations seems to be a feature of most SF and it would tie in with the "exploit the planet" victory.

In order to win you would need:

1. Build or capture a corp HQ.

2. Establishing your corp in at least X% of the cities on the planet. Your opponents may have methods of removing the corp and installing their own ones, so this should be a challenge in and of itself.

3. Build Project Domino. This use the spaceship model of requiring a number of different late game techs to complete. The catch is that each stage of Project Domino requires certain resources, can only be built in a city which has specific building (e.g. Factories, Research Labs, etc.) and must be built in a city which features your corp. Furthermore each step of Project Domino counts as a National Wonder and, hence, can only be built in one city. Should that City be captured, the National Wonder is lost and you need to start that phase of the Project again. You also have the option of making each hoop harder to jump through than the last, so perhaps 15% corp dominance and no resources for step one, 20% corp dominance and a choice of three different resources for step two, etc.

Finally include a lead time like the Spaceship in the main game. This means that having completed PD you must now defend your PD cities against any would-be attackers that want to destroy it. If PD isn't planet-friendly, that could be quite a few.

 

[rocklikeafool]

Transcendence is using the abilities and purpose of planet's consciousness to transcend our current human forms and attain a higher level of consciousness.

'Symbiosis' would be when you merely survive the flowering, and are the only humans left alive on planet. You're still lowly mortal humans, but everyone else is dead, so you win!

Lemme give the dictionary definitions to clearly define these.
Symbiosis is the living together of two dissimilar organisms, as in Mutualism, Commensalism, Amensalism, or Parasitism. For Planetfall, I'd say this would mean you learn to live well with the planet. Basically, it's like the Elves in the LotR. They do everythin in respect of nature. So, it's basically extreme environmentalism.
Transcendence would be the quality of transcending the universe, time, etc. For Planetfall, I'd say this would mean you become a greater form than plain humanity. I'm not sure how this would work, except that your society becomes so enlightened and so much higher above your rivals' societies that they all surrender to you and your greater reasoning.

In order to win Transcendence you would spend most of the game tending your ecology.To win a wormgate victory you would spend most of your time researching to get to the uber-project.

I agree with that.Transcendence should be based off of your knowledge, what people striving toward transcendence might call wisdom, and not your ability to take care of the planet. It's not an anti-environmentalist approach; it jus doesn't emphasize the environment. It's bout scientific research and gainin the most knowledge you can, through any means possible.

One way I could see the wormgate be interesting would be to require some other sort of continued goal. I like the Tower of mastery victory in FfH, it keeps me interested in achieving the required goals because they are different from the norm. If I didn't have to collect the mana and just had to research and build something, it wouldn't be very interesting to me.

What if you need to have wormgate transceivers positioned in a specific way? (similar to the space elevator in Vanilla's latitude requirement) You must build eight of them and then must be located on each of the eight parts of the globe? This would require planning and intent to secure suitable city sites in each zone. just an example, I'm not really suggesting that we should do that particular implementation.

That sounds cool. But as in FfH, certain parts require certain techs. I'd also make it so that it can be done in your cities and doesn't require the foundin of new cities. (So, yes, I disagree with the part bout 8 wormgate transceivers and buildin them on 8 different parts of the globe.) At some point, the foundin of new cities becomes impossible and then war is the only option. Sometimes, this happens rather quickly.


I hope my comin in so l8 here doesn't annoy anyone.

 

[rocklikeafool]

How about using the corporations feature from BtS? Mega-corporations seems to be a feature of most SF and it would tie in with the "exploit the planet" victory.

In order to win you would need:

1. Build or capture a corp HQ.

2. Establishing your corp in at least X% of the cities on the planet. Your opponents may have methods of removing the corp and installing their own ones, so this should be a challenge in and of itself.

3. Build Project Domino. This use the spaceship model of requiring a number of different late game techs to complete. The catch is that each stage of Project Domino requires certain resources, can only be built in a city which has specific building (e.g. Factories, Research Labs, etc.) and must be built in a city which features your corp. Furthermore each step of Project Domino counts as a National Wonder and, hence, can only be built in one city. Should that City be captured, the National Wonder is lost and you need to start that phase of the Project again. You also have the option of making each hoop harder to jump through than the last, so perhaps 15% corp dominance and no resources for step one, 20% corp dominance and a choice of three different resources for step two, etc.

Finally include a lead time like the Spaceship in the main game. This means that having completed PD you must now defend your PD cities against any would-be attackers that want to destroy it. If PD isn't planet-friendly, that could be quite a few.

This sounds very interestin. Are there any ways you could prevent your rivals from removin your corp? Like maybe espionage points could help with this? Or you could build a special security buildin for your corporation.

 

[Duneflower]

Hey...that's how you corner the global energy-market! o.o That's your Economic victory! Instead of just "invest an assload of energy and wait", you spread your corp/s and try and purge competitors (corps that don't compete aren't a direct threat, so if you can manage to get more than one, you can really quash other factions' hopes of beating you to it). The trick is, the purging part doesn't come until after that massive investment, and maybe involves something like a culture-war between the corps?

 

[rocklikeafool]

Ooh...sounds fun. Economics at its best and bloodiest.

 

[Lockesdonkey]

Hm, this all looks very interesting.

I've been pondering this for a while, in particular the ideas that 1. there should be an alternate, non-Transcendence builder victory based on high-tech "hard" science and 2. reestablishing contact with Earth. I think I can combine them.

Rather than having some sort of weird gravity-transportation thingy, let's model this as a straight Space Race, but with modifications. The Ship would be to re-colonize Earth (the Interludes make it clear that Earth self-destructed), and would reflect that by having all the applicable components (casing, stasis pods, etc.). However, rather than base it on the number of engines/thrusters, we would make several different types of engines/thrusters that would affect the speed of the journey, spaced out across the tech tree so as to make waiting worthwhile for some and not for others. I would suggest a progression of four engine types, with base times for the journey being (tentatively) 180, 120, 40 (canonical speed of the Unity), and 5 (near-lightspeed) years.

It's not fleshed out (obviously).

 

[rocklikeafool]

That sounds interestin. It could be fun too. I remember the Alpha Centurai race in CivII was pretty frickin fun. I always liked it. Tho, I hate it in CivIV cuz there's no expansion for Alpha Centurai games. Like there was with CivII: Test of Time. (Ah, the nastolgia... !)

 

[soggy_amphibian]

This is long, so I’m splitting it up into different posts.

1/4
One thing about most of the victories in SMAC was that there seemed to be little other than a "Yay! You did it" message. That was the thing I liked about the Transcendence victory, you got a little video.
Another thing was that scoring points didn't have a lot to do with victory. Transcending, Supreme Ruler, Corner Global Energy Market etc, a bunch of instawin victories, was one thing, and the score and rankings and "For I Have Tasted The Fungus" was quite another.
So thinking along the lines of investment and payoff, and the stuff that you've already been talking about in the way of keeping the endgame interesting and varied, and strategies for hindering other players' victories other than "capture/destroy the enemy HQ in the next 20 turns"... I've come up with some ideas.
I don't know what's possible and what isn't, I'm hoping that some ideas will prove useful, even if they just inspire something completely different

POINTS
I like the idea of different categories of victory. Economic=corner the global energy market, etc. I also like the idea of being rewarded for following your stated ideologies. We choose our civics based on what they offer us, and we weigh up the benefits and the negatives and try to balance them out. I think that's illustrated particularly well in SMAC, where changing your social engineering settings showed you the differences and the balances in the chart, all that red and green and RESEARCH +2. And you could have a GREEN economy and act un-green as it were.

 

[soggy_amphibian]

2/4
ECOLOGY and TRANSCENDENCE
A GREEN ecology would be terraforming, making everything like Earth. Points for planting farms, and so on.
A RED ecology would be to embrace Planet. There were places in SMAC where you could get nice energy/mineral/nutrient numbers from fungus. Points for planting fungus.
A HYBRID ecology would obviously be a mix of the two. Points for planting hybrid forests, and suchlike.
A GREY ecology would be more like embracing the MMI and cybernetic consciousness, not particularly caring one way or the other about the environment, emphasis would be more to do with mines and boreholes and tidal harnesses and so on.
If these were to be civics choices, then points awarded for living out a civic when you've got it enabled, eg if you've chosen RED, then each Plant Fungus would give you 1 point. Or you could accumulate points in each category, but at the end of the game the only points that count would be in your strongest ecology model.
Now, Transcendence would only really be compatible with RED and HYBRID ecologies. The way I see it, Transcendence was only one possible outcome for Planet, in the story at least. The others were just straight flowering, and planetdeath.
It's difficult to see how those outcomes by themselves could be victory conditions, but they could be interesting game devices.
You could have the flowering as an actual game event (the flowering counter reaches a certain level at which point it becomes inevitable, message "Flowering in 20 turns" or somesuch to give the players time to prepare). A victory condition could be made here; if 75% of your bases survive the flowering and each other faction has 75% of their bases destroyed, you win. (Planet: The Survivalists Guide) Otherwise, each base that survives could contribute points. I think that all this would work well with the GREEN ecology, the fungus would take longer to reach your bases because you 'formed it all away, though similar could be argued for GREY.
Planetdeath, I think requires a little more imagination because although Planet mentions it, ascertaining what it means (or which possible meaning would be best for the game), takes more working out. It could mean removing all the fungus from Planet, it could mean removing enough fungus so that the intelligence behind the fungus could no longer survive (or the 10m flowering cycle is effectively reset). Further to this, would Hybrid Forests, for example, count towards Planet's survival or eradication? The more you try and kill Planet, the more it would fight back. Would killing Planet also affect the ability of anything else to grow? Reduce output of Farms and suchlike? Planetdeath would therefore fit best under GREY, but isn't entirely incompatible with GREEN, unexpected consequences are a part of life.
The Beard on Page 1 of this thread had some good ideas that could fit in with mine.
A little more on Transcendence, if a large part of it is plugging the Datalinks into Planet, some Probe Team activities could increase your profile in some subtle way in the Datalinks, increasing the percentage of Transcended Planetmind that is your personality. And equally have some missions to reduce other factions' influences. And you'd have to "plug in" to transcend at a certain point, maybe when flowering becomes inevitable, maybe the turn that flowering starts.

 

[soggy_amphibian]

3/4
ECONOMY
I like the picture painted by Jabie, rocklikeafool and Duneflower.
How about there are, let's say 5 types of corporation: Food, Drink, Entertainment, Materials, Construction. Each faction, on discovery of a relevant technology, has the option of founding their own version of each corporation. There could be benefits to letting other factions do all that kind of work, too, so it's not everybody racing for the same thing. To corner the global energy market, your market share has to be 80% in four out of the five corporation types.

TECHNOLOGY
Space Race, or rather Earth Race. I like Lockesdonkey's thinking there about engine types, and the strategic component of knowing what's worth waiting for and what isn't.
How about having the spaceship, in whatever configuration, only have a 35% chance of succeeding its mission? To increase the chances, each component could undergo testing, which would obviously need extra time to be invested. If having multiple engines, each type only needs testing once. Secondary, tertiary tests could be available, but with diminishing returns of likelihood of success. Then, when the spaceship's finally been put together, have the option of a shakedown cruise (round the sun and back) to bring the chance of success up to a maximum of 85%. But have the ship be imperilled by enemy Orbital Defense Pods, and damage could again reduce the chance of success, but repairing could take more time (I imagine repairing in orbit). You could have optional shields and weapons slots for help against damage and attack, such additions would not necessarily affect the chance of success.
The Wormgate that Maniac describes could increase the chance of success to 100%: the ship doesn't have to traverse all that space, after all, but have the units have to be active on those points, for something like 5 whole turns otherwise the mission fails, bye bye spaceship, build it again. Perhaps other factions could send their ships through your open wormgate.

 

[soggy_amphibian]

4/4
DIPLOMACY
Have points for getting other factions to call off their vendettas against each other, maybe even have a victory for convincing everyone to Pact with everyone else (to be maintained for 10 full turns). Double points if you're Lal.

MILITARY
Can Conquest ever be any different?

DOMINATION
I like the idea of thwarting victories, have the experience be tooth and nail through a lot of it, and defeat from the jaws of victory (just when you thought you'd won... or thought it was safe to go back in the water). I've tried to find ways to implement this, as you can see. But if victory's now that much more difficult, I think that could make a points-based victory condition quite important.
As you can see, there's ECONOMY, ECOLOGY, TECHNOLOGY, DIPLOMACY and MILITARY, and I hope they have quite different flavours (though naturally there are shared aspects between them). If points can be scored in each of those sections (maybe other sections as well), then Domination could be given a different flavour: a blend. Have points for building a spaceship module, for completing secret projects, for each military victory, for each successful diplomatic transaction, for each base with your corporation represented. Once you've reached a certain point threshold in each of the categories, you win Domination. Have Time be a category, more points for doing things quicker. I didn't really like being forced to finish in a certain Mission Year, but perhaps this is where Time fits in.

Hope this stirs some creative juices.